9/15/2021

Process Notes

We begin with raw court case data scraped from the General District Court Online Case Information System.

We apply a series of cleaning, standardization, and data aggregation procedures, including:

  • Standardizing plaintiff and defendant names (e.g. “LLC” v. “L.L.C.”)
  • Correcting common misspellings specific to these data (e.g., “Houseing” –> “Housing”)
  • Extracting defendant ZIP Codes for each case
  • Removing errant duplicate case records
  • Identifying residential defendants
  • Identifying corporate/government plaintiffs (i.e., non-human entities)
  • Calculating total case costs
  • Determining presence/absence of defense attorney

The summaries and visualization presented here include unlawful detainer cases filed between July 1, 2018 and March 31, 2021. Integration of cases from April through June is in progress.

Data Breakdown

Visualizations

On the following slides, we present a set of data visualizations reflecting eviction cases filed against residential defendants in the Albemarle and Charlottesville General District Courts

Overall Case Totals & Outcomes

Case Outcomes by Court/Plaintiff Type

Over Time Trends

Albemarle General District Court

Charlottesville General District Court

Albemarle GDC: Filings by ZIP

Albemarle GDC: Evictions by ZIP

Charlottesville GDC: Filings by ZIP

Charlottesville GDC: Evictions by ZIP

Defendant Costs, Albemarle GDC

Defendant Costs, Charlottesville GDC

Remaining Data Questions

  1. Is every writ of eviction reliably recorded on the Virginia General District Court websites?

  2. Are data about whether judgments were satisfied in a case reliably recorded on the Virginia General District Court websites?

  3. Is the relevant geographic scope determined by the General District in which a case is filed (which includes defendants with ZIP codes listed outside of the Charlottesville and Albemarle areas), or is it determined by the defendant ZIP code provided in the court filing?

Potential Analyses and Revisions

  • Inclusion/exclusion of serial cases.

  • Examination of frequent serial filers.

  • Inclusion/exclusion of filings against commercial properties.

  • Further analysis by ZIP code.

  • Comparisons based on presence of legal representation for defendants (< 30 cases).

  • Others?